The PS1 played host to an incredible number of memorable and influential RPGs, one of which was Konami’s Suikoden. That strong debut was followed by a handful of sequels that eventually came out during the sixth generation of consoles, and Konami has since practically abandoned the series. Not ones to be cowed, some key members of the Suikoden crew eventually left Konami to form a new team called Rabbit & Bear, who started a successful crowdfunding campaign for this spiritual successor called Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. After a four-year development cycle, Eiyuden Chronicle is finally in our hands and while it has its fair share of issues, overall it’s a very enjoyable and nostalgic JRPG that we’re sure you’ll enjoy.
The story is set in the fictional country of Allraan and begins by focusing on the growing tensions between the powerful imperial country of Galdea and a neighboring province called the League of Nations. Although they technically exist three The protagonists of this story, your main character to begin with is Nowa, a lively young man from a peaceful border village who joins a small peacekeeping force of the League of Nations. Nowa and his band go about their business quelling bandit attacks and helping people as much as they can, but they soon find themselves in the middle of much larger political tensions that eventually give way to war between the Empire and the League. In order to regain his homeland and avenge his losses, Nowa therefore sets out to build a resistance and defeat the Chaldeans.
Although the pace of the narrative seems to change at will in many places, here we admire the scope of the story. Whichever way you direct, properly balancing over a hundred unique characters and detailing all the various international conflicts that affect them is a difficult task for any writing team, and whatever depth is lost in the overarching plot is found in the characterization of the individual. While not every member of the titular hundred heroes is equally fleshed out, there is still a ‘core’ cast here that develops naturally as they experience war together and bond over it. So it’s a solid story all around, if it feels clunky at times.
Gameplay follows the traditional JRPG template of visiting towns, clearing monsters in dungeons, and slowly exploring a large world full of adventure and potential. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but the gameplay loop here is well executed, aided by a fluid character recruitment system. As indicated in the title, there are over a hundred party members that you can convince to your cause, and while not all of them can be brought into battle, they add many diversity to adventure.
Some party members are a reward offered at the end of their own significant sidequests, such as the early recruit we helped through a dungeon in a short subplot so we could defeat the monster at the end together, while others will join simply by triggering a short scene after passing them . Admittedly, those who fall into this latter group feel a bit like scraps of cut content, but we still appreciated the relatively quick pace at which you meet and mingle with this colorful cast. While some of the characters are a little shallow and defined only by their gimmick, each one is memorable and adds something worthwhile to the ever-growing pile of sleazebags. Our favorite recruit was a sweet, gentle healer who you meet relatively early on and who flies into an unbridled rage at the slightest provocation.
As you crawl through the endless dungeons scattered across the land, you’ll often be drawn into random battles that are the most obvious homage to Suikoden. Here you command a team of up to six characters, three in the front and three in the back, in turn-based combat. The timeline at the top of the screen will always show you the order in which enemies and allies will act, and while you can’t mess with this like you could in something like Grandia or Octopath Traveler, it allows you to prioritize enemies during battle.
Something we particularly enjoyed were the boss fights, which often have a “Gimmick” that changes the way you approach them. Not only are these battles a good test of your team building abilities, but these tricks can add a completely unique dimension and almost puzzle element. One boss has a series of stone walls that target characters can hide behind, while another sees your enemy piloting a machine that does a lot of damage but can be turned against them if you engage with it at the right time.
In the story’s key boss fights, you also engage in dramatic one-on-one duels that function in an almost rock-paper-scissors-paper system. Here you have to carefully plan when to attack your opponent and when to counter the incoming strike, all in the hope of building up a big ‘Break’ attack to break their guard and drain their health bar. These duels often feel as tense as the story portrays them, and we especially appreciated that they also act as a kind of dialogue-filled scene between the dueling characters.
Outside of the typical JRPG gameplay loop, there are a few other mechanics worth mentioning. At major points in the story, you’ll sometimes find yourself drawn into a large-scale battle in War Mode, which plays out as an Advance Wars-style mini-fight where each party member commands their own platoons that you command on a small grid. Targeting enemies this way can be fun, but the battles are too small for deep strategizing, and it can get a little boring watching all the combat animations while you twiddle your thumbs and wait for the game to give you back control.
Additionally, there’s city-building gameplay that acts as an extended side quest that encourages you to return to base routinely. Here you can invest resources and assign new recruits to build different parts of the village, giving some gameplay advantages while also acting as a fun time deciding how to decorate the town. It’s obviously not the main focus of the adventure, but we appreciated having a ‘home’ to return to after completing another quest, and it’s rewarding to see it grow and flourish over time.
Eiyuden Chronicle was clearly created as an homage to the JRPGs of the past, but at times it feels like it’s just holding its own also much to some of the more tedious and archaic elements of the genre. One early quest sees a character asking you to travel to a specific dungeon to claim three boar hides before he joins your crew. Of course, this dungeon is all the way on the other side of the map and you can’t fast travel to it, so you have to walk all the way there and then literally run in circles in circles, hoping that the next random encounter will contain the wanted enemy. What should be a five-minute task at the most becomes a boring 15-20 minute exercise, and there are many points where the game drags things out like this without justifying the extra length.
So from a purely design and mechanics perspective, Eiyuden Chronicle is a pretty decent JRPG, but one place where the Switch version falls down pretty hard is execution. Unfortunately, this game just doesn’t work well on the Switch, and you’re reminded of that almost constantly throughout the adventure. Although the framerate is aiming for 30fps, the only time you’ll really see this is when you’re in a really small and static area, like an item shop. Elsewhere, the frame rate will often require huge jumps into much choppier territory, and it’s especially noticeable in most dungeons and throughout the world.
We wish the framerate drop was the extent of the technical issues, but unfortunately there’s more to cover here; load times are annoyingly long and loads are all over the place as you progress. For example, you will be presented with a four to seven (!!!) second loading screen each time when a random encounter kicks in and you’ll have to go through another one as soon as the fight is over. Sometimes the fight itself is shorter than the loading time.
This loading problem even extends to aspects you wouldn’t expect, such as menus. Every time you open the main menu to mess with your inventory or party setup, you have to go through a short but noticeable load for literally every single tab on the menu, and you’ll have to endure those small loads all over again every time you close it and reopen the menu screen to do something else. Over the course of 50 or so hours, this could add literal hours to your playtime.
The technical problems don’t stop there either, as there are occasional soft locks that force you to close the game, praying that an autosave occurred recently. We encountered a particularly egregious example of this where the game got stuck in a loading screen loop after completing a nearly 40-minute sequence of skirmishes, boss battles, and plot-heavy cutscenes without a single save crystal in sight. Sure enough, upon reloading, we discovered that the game’s last autosave had just been ago all this started.
While we think it would be hyperbolic to call Eiyuden Chronicle a technical disaster on the Switch, its performance certainly is not good, and hopefully the team is working on patches to bring it to an acceptable level. None of the issues here (with perhaps the exception of the soft locks) are direct problems with the game, but they all add up to what feels like a decidedly substandard experience on the Switch. Despite all the problems, we’d say Eiyuden Chronicle is more it’s worth your time if you’re a JRPG fan, but we’d encourage you to at least wait a bit after launch to see if these issues are resolved. They could have been worse, of course, but they could have been a lot better, and it’s quite disappointing to see an otherwise wonderful game released in such a state.
Performance issues aside, Eiyuden Chronicle otherwise has an excellent presentation. The visuals are reminiscent of the art styles of other modern retro RPGs such as Octopath Traveler II and Star Ocean: Second Story R, blending highly detailed 2D sprites with 3D environments and models. Although the 3D stuff feels too blocky and blurry, the high-quality spritework helps distract from this, leaving an overall good impression.
The soundtrack is equally enjoyable, featuring a satisfying array of music that adequately covers the scope of the adventure while leaving plenty of room for its quieter moments. Whether you hear the uplifting song that first plays when you enter the overworld or the music laced with woodwinds when you enter another village, the music really seems to add a much needed extra layer to enhance immersion. All in all, it’s a very relaxing collection of tunes, but for the most part, it fits the tone of the narrative well.
